Oakland killer's death sentence upheld

2007-06-04 13:22:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- The state Supreme Court upheld the death sentence today of a man who shot and killed four people on or near Interstate 580 in Oakland in 1989.

Charles Stevens, 38, of Oakland was also convicted of 10 counts of attempted murder for a rampage that terrorized motorists for two months in 1989. He was caught on a freeway on-ramp that June while watching police attend to the wrecked car of his last murder victim, 28-year-old William August.

A driver told authorities that he had been traveling on I-580 a few minutes earlier when a man pulled alongside him, smiled, pulled out a gun and opened fire. The driver wasn't injured and identified Stevens after his arrest. Police said Stevens was carrying a gun linked to all the murders and had newspaper clippings about the shootings in his room.

Besides August, a mechanical engineer from Oakland, the victims were Lori Rochon, 36, an Oakland college student who was driving to work when she was killed; Leslie Ann Noyer, 29, a cosmetologist from Oakland; and Laquann Sloan, 16, killed on a street near the freeway in West Oakland.

According to testimony cited by the court, Stevens' mother was abusive and drank herself to death, a brother was convicted of murder in 1978, and a psychiatrist said Stevens had a personality disorder but was not mentally ill.

"He was described by the prosecutor as a thrill killer," said Dane Gillette, a senior assistant attorney general. "He had this gun and he liked the excitement of killing people and shooting at people."

In today's ruling, the court unanimously rejected a defense claim of racial bias in jury selection, saying the prosecutor had dismissed three African Americans from the jury panel because they seemed ambivalent about the death penalty, not because of their race.

Justices Carlos Moreno and Joyce Kennard, in separate opinions, disagreed with the other five justices about one of the grounds for the death sentence, a jury finding that Stevens killed August by "lying in wait."

The majority, led by Justice Carol Corrigan, said the finding was justified by evidence that Stevens had concealed his purpose by driving alongside August's car and looking at him as if he knew him before shooting.

Moreno said the ruling interpreted the capital crime of murder by lying in wait so broadly that it would apply to virtually any type of murder except those in which killers announce their intentions to their victims. But he and Kennard voted to uphold the death sentence on a charge of multiple murder, which is also a capital crime.